If you like raw, fast, ugly basement-punk, then your world is not complete unless it has Public Acid in it. When pandemic restrictions started to lift in 2021, I saw Public Acid and some other bands play a guerrilla outdoor show that might’ve been the closest I’ve ever come to living in a post-apocalyptic world. I fucking loved it. Public Acid make the kind of mean, freaked-out hardcore that sounds best in that setting, and they are really, really good at it. Their new album is hitting me hard today.

Public Acid’s new LP Deadly Struggle, their first in six years, is as frantic and chaotic as I would’ve hoped. This kind of music can wash over me, a pleasurable angry-weasel mood music that creates a vibe but doesn’t leap out at you. (This is probably helped when the music is recorded at murky low fidelity, which it almost always is.) But Public Acid’s attack won’t fade into the background. It actually gets my pulse going, and it makes me want to run around and do something stupid. Check it out below.

Deadly Struggle is out now on Beach Impediment Records.